Women in Horror Pt III: The Bad Girls

That's a rare photograph of the lovely Gale Sondergaard in test makeup as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Ultimately, she was deemed too pretty and the role went to Margaret Hamilton, as we all know. But that didn't stop Sondergaard from playing villainesses in movies like 1940's The Blue Bird, 1944's The Spider Woman or 1946's The Spider Woman Strikes Back. Beautiful and seductive, Sondergaard's exotic looks often meant she was cast as bad girl.

And bad girls, despite director Mervyn Leroy's insistence that a witch had to ugly, are usually quite the opposite in film. Especially when it comes to Horror movies.

Take young Patty McCormick in the 1956 classic The Bad Seed. McCormick, reprising her role from the Broadway production,  plays Rhoda Penmark, a lovely young lady with impeccable manners who always appears immaculately groomed and knows exactly what to say to get the adults in her life to do what she wants them to. The problem? Well, it seems young Rhoda is a sociopathic murderess who will stop at nothing to get her way.

In the 1960's and  '70's, movie villainesses were regulated to crazy old broads like Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? her rival, Joan Crawford in Strait-Jacket and Berserk and Shelley Winters in What's the Matter with Helen? and Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (and what's the deal with all the titles as questions?).

The tides soon turned as Paula Sheppard became the prime suspect in Alice, Sweet Alice (aka Communion), a 1976 slasher tale about the murder of a young girl who gets all the attention in her family. The movie is actually the film debut of Booke Shields, who plays the young murder victim.

Gee - nothing like stealing the theme from Psycho, eh?

Since then, villainesses have slipped back and forth between children and adults. There's Kathy Bates' Oscar-winning performance as Annie Wilkes in Rob Reiner's amazing and chilling adaptation of Stephen King's Misery:

Let's not forget South African actress Alice Krige, who has been the very bad girl in everything from Ghost Story and Star Trek: First Contact to Silent Hill.

Of course, there have been two rather remarkable "child" villainesses in recent Horror history... First is Daviegh Chase as Samara in the American version of The Ring:

And then there's young Isabelle Fuhrman in the very disturbing Orphan:



But for my money, the most effective Horror movie villainess in recent memory is Lorna Raver as Sylvia Ganush is Sam Raimi's brilliantly effective Drag Me to Hell, a movie I love on so many levels:



 

So, is there anything scarier than a wicked woman? Maybe. But these gals sure got to me. Maybe its an Oedipal thing? Or maybe it's the mistrust men seem to naturally have of women. Or maybe it's just good movie making. In any case, it often seems the best and most frightening Horror villain is a woman... I'll leave it up to you to decide why that is..

More, anon.

Prospero

Women in Horror Pt I: The Victims

As long as there have been motion pictures, there have been Horror movies. Indeed, one of the Edison Company's first movies was a version of Frankenstein. 

And for almost as long as there have been Horror movies, there have been women as the victims of the monsters in those horror movies.  Whether it's Mary Philbin as Christine in the 1925 version of The Phantom of the Opera (pictured to your left); Mae Clark in James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein or Janet Leigh in Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 Psycho, women have often been the target of some monstrous force or being. 

Of course, this is a stereotype derived from the idea that women are "the weaker sex." In the 1931 version of Dracula, Helen Chandler is Mina, helpless against the evil charms of the Hungarian vampire:

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been adapted on film many times. Nita Naldi (1920); Miriam Hopkins (1931): Ingrid Bergman (1941) and Julia Roberts (1996) have all played the female victim of Robert Louis Stevenson's notorious Mr. Hyde in various incarnations of the story about man's dual nature. None of them survived to tell about it.

In the 1950's, Horror movies were concerned with genetic mutations and actresses such as Julia Adams; Yvette Vickers; Joan Weldon and Peggie Castle were at the mercy of Gill-Men, aliens and giant insects.

In the tumultuous 1960's, Horror movies continued to victimize women, as evidenced by Tippi Hedren and Suzanne Pleshette in The Birds; Candace Hilligoss in Carnival of Souls; Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby and  Judith O'Dea in Night of the Living Dead.

The 70's came along and though women were finally starting to be heard as powerful members of society, Horror movies continued to paint them as victims (though many films of the era turned them into the monsters - but more on them in an upcoming post). In what many consider the scariest movie ever, Linda Blair; Ellen Burstyn and Kitty Wynn are all victims of the demon Pazzuzu. 

By the late 70's, a new type of female Horror character would emerge, and I'll be all over that in my next post about The Final Girl. Until then...

More, anon.

Prospero